Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Peak coal is not imminent

Some PO writers have recently claimed that peak coal is very imminent. One article on TheOilDrum claimed that peak coal will hit sometime this year (2011), while another paper claimed that peak coal will occur sometime in the next 15 years.

Here's a quote from the article on TheOilDrum:"Dave Rutledge might have been the first to produce such a forecast, with the conclusion that coal extraction will come to a peak in 15 years. Kjell Aleklett's research group reached the conclusion that an all-time maximum would occur in about 10 years. But by bringing the peak forward to 2011, Tad Patzek drew the attention of, and gained the honour of coverage by a magazine the caliber of National Geographic."

These estimates of imminent peak coal are drastically at odds with the convetional view of coal availablility. For example, the USGS claims that we have enough coal for centuries. And some other sources have gone so far as to claim that coal is not only abundant, but "super-abundant" and could fulfill all our energy needs (including transportation needs through coal liquefaction) for centuries.

Which of these two views is correct? Do we face an imminent shortage of coal, or do we have vast amounts of the stuff?

I don't know when coal will peak, but I'm certain it won't peak soon. My reason is economic. At present, there is very little worldwide trade in coal. Each country meets its demand for coal from its own domestic mining and supply, with only a few exceptions. This fact implies that we are not approaching peak coal. It means that even the countries which have very small coal reserves and high consumption still haven't hit their own local peaks of coal yet, and therefore have no need to import it. For example, China mines coal at 3x the rate of the United States, yet has half the reserves or less, but China hasn't reached its own peak of coal yet. In fact, China tripled its rate of domestic coal production over the last 15 years which suggests that it's not even approaching peak coal within its own territory. If China isn't facing a local peak of coal, then the United States certainly isn't, since the U.S. has twice the reserves as China and a far lower rate of extraction.

Peak coal won't happen until after the major consumers of coal (like China) have hit their own peaks and begin importing huge amounts of the stuff from the USA and elsewhere. Only then will there even be a world market for coal in which a worldwide Hubbert-type peak would even be meaningful. The worldwide peak of coal will happen decades after the worldwide market for coal has been established. Peak coal will happen when China has been importing huge amounts of coal from the U.S. for decades, and when the U.S. starts to run out.

There are also other reasons to believe that peak coal is not imminent. The USGS and others have documented massive coal resources in the North Slope of Alaska that are totally undeveloped at present, and that contain more coal than the rest of the world combined. These estimates of massive reserves are disbelieved by peak coalists, because the estimates are uncertain, and because the data are of low quality. However, the absence of high-quality data suggests that peak coal is not imminent, because we're not even bothering to search for coal yet in far-flung places. We haven't even bothered to start digging in Alaska to find out how much is there. We won't reach peak coal until we've searched everywhere in the world for it and can't find any new large mines, despite a gradual depletion of the old ones.

In some ways, the coal market today is analogous to the oil market in the 1950s. In the 1950s, most countries met their demand for oil through local production. For example, the US was the largest consumer of oil (by far) but had little need to import any, since it could satisfy its oil demand using its own fairly modest reserves. Furthermore, nobody had bothered to search far-flung places for oil yet, because doing so wasn't necessary. There were rumors of vast resources in the middle east and elsewhere, which lay totally unexploited and mostly unsurveyed.

That situation is what we face today with coal. China hasn't begun importing very much, and the United States, which is like the Middle East of coal, hasn't even begun exporting very much. Furthermore, we haven't even explored for coal worldwide, because we haven't started to run out of our local supplies. In these regards, the market for coal is exactly analogous to the market for oil in the 1950s, six decades before the worldwide peak.

In short. The worldwide coal peak appears not to be imminent. Peak coal is at least several decades away. We'll know that peak coal is approaching when the following conditions are met: 1) the major coal consumers, like China, have hit their own local peaks of coal and are importing huge amounts of the stuff from the USA; and 2) coal companies have charted everywhere in the world and have exhausted new places to look for coal. When those two conditions have been met, we'll know that the peak of coal is only a few decades away. With oil, both of those conditions were met at least 50 years before we reached peak oil worldwide.

I don't think there's any way to know right now when peak coal will occur. We haven't even bothered to search for coal worldwide, so we don't know how much is available in Alaska or elsewhere. At this early stage, we don't even have a good worldwide picutre. All we can know is that peak coal is not imminent.

30 comments:

Tom, don't worry buddy. You're linked in to my blog so I see updates as soon as they appear.

I tend to agree with you about coal. Also bearing in mind the massive reserves of coal in Alaska: Canada is a lot bigger than the United States. It's fairly likely there is a lot more in British Columbia and Alberta.

You're confusing rate of production with resource sizes, assuming that the size of the resource determines the rate of production.

Look for instance at the way lotteries work. One option for the payout is monthly payment plan.

If you win and choose this option, you may be millionaire, but if the payout is $2k / month you won't live like one. And even though you're a millionaire, $2k / month might represent peak income for you, for many years if you don't work to get more.

Funny. When oil prices spike, the "debunkers" always seem to find some cherry to pick that makes it all better.

Funny that there's no mention of the environmental disasters that coal mining invariably involves. No mention of the pollutants and carcinogens produced in the burning of coal. No mention of all the lives lost in coal mining disasters.

I don't see any reason to believe that extraction of coal from Alaska's north slope would be rate-limited. I grant that Alaskan coal production would have to shut down part of the year because of the winters there. But I don't see why they couldn't mine more coal the rest of the year to compensate. Granted it would require large ships and shipping terminals, etc, but this involves technology which is already understood.

Even if coal mining were limited to a slow rate, despite large resources, that would mean that coal wouldn't follow a "hubbert curve" at all but might plateau for a very long time or would deplete extremely slowly. This would give us a lot of time (perhaps centuries) to transition to alternatives. In other words, a low rate of production would not push back the peak, but it would attenuate the decline.

"you may be millionaire, but if the payout is $2k / month you won't live like one."

I'm not disputing that coal is environmentally very destructive. I agree with you on that point. I beleive we must transition away from coal burning fairly quickly (within in the next 2 decades), and I personally favor a heavy re-investment in nuclear power as a replacement.

The only reason I didn't address the environmental effects of coal was because I was trying to stick to a fairly narrow topic of peak coal and when it will occur, leaving aside its environmental consequences. All I'm arguing here is that we don't face energy collapse or severe energy shortage. I'm not endorsing the view of "drill, baby, drill" or anything like that.

Coal is a heat source, nothing more. It's converted into electricity using a heat engine. It could be replaced by other heat sources, like solar thermal or nuclear. Coal isn't essential to modern civilization, and we should repalce it for environmental reasons.

I definitely grant that point. I spoke too quickly. Coal is used to make some chemicals from coal tar, and is used for activated carbon filters, and can be used to make plastics etc (although this isn't done often at present). Coal has uses other than energy.

What I meant was that coal, when used for energy, is just a heat source which could in theory be replaced by other heat sources such as burning woody biomass, solar thermal, etc. Those heat sources could even be used for the production of cement etc.

"What I meant was that coal, when used for energy, is just a heat source which could in theory be replaced by other heat sources such as burning woody biomass, solar thermal, etc."

You could say the same thing about oil, natural gas, ie, any fossil fuel. "Peak coal is not imminent." The mining of coal is destroys environments and kills miners slowly with lung disease and quickly with cave-ins. The burning of coal releases all sorts of toxins into the air.

Personally, I'm depressed about it. If coal peaked, then it would force a transition to cleaner forms of energy. The transition to cleaner forms of energy wouldn't cause major disruption to industrial civilization, and wouldn't cost very much more than we're paying now.

We need to move off coal ASAP. What's lacking is political will. Peak coal would get around the lack of political will.

We're going to end up with a transition to cleaner forms of energy anyway. Right now wind is already competitive in certain markets with coal and solar is within spitting distance of being competitive in a smaller section of markets.

What the lack of shortage of coal does is give us a chance to continue with battery development.

Right now the main reason we don't switch is quite simply cost. IF the cost of solar and/or wind PLUS storage were close to that of electricity produced by coal then we'd switch overnight. It's a no-brainer.

If energy is bountiful and ever increasingly so, then why are you clutching at coal [with this once again profoundly flawed analysis]?

PS - 119 Years.

Coal has peaked and the day of complete depletion pegged. "There is enough coal to last us around 119 years at current rates of production." http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-is-coal-found/

Read between the lines you bright little economist you. "At current rates of production" implies current rate of consumption as well. In reality, demand increases while production decreases - meaning we have much less than 119 years of coal - bountiful energy boy.

In fact, China tripled its rate of domestic coal production over the last 15 years which suggests that it's not even approaching peak coal within its own territory. If China isn't facing a local peak of coal, then the United States certainly isn't, since the U.S. has twice the reserves as China and a far lower rate of extraction.

How does tripling ones production suggest that you aren't about to hit peak coal? If you look at reported reserves, there is definately reason to assume that China might be close to peak coal. Also the absolutely stunning demand growth suggests it will be hit even sooner. China became a net importer of coal in 2009 and is likely to continue being one in the future. This means coal trade will get more common soon enough.

I don't really disagree with the main point that peak coal is far off, but with the current prices the peak is definately within the horizons, which means coal is bound to get a lot more expensive during our lifetimes. How prices affect recovery is also a big question. USGS research in the gillette coal field seems to suggest coal reserves are very reactive to prices, but this seems to be pretty much the only authoritative research on the subject, and it's only one coal field.

I think coal is basically going to follow the path of oil, only half a century or a century later (assuming we don't do any of those fantastic energy breakthroughs).

Babun:"I think coal is basically going to follow the path of oil, only half a century or a century later (assuming we don't do any of those fantastic energy breakthroughs)."

This definitely seems plausible to me. I wouldn't be surprised if peak coal hit before the close of the 21st century. I also grant that coal could follow a trajectory similar to that of oil except 50-100 years behind.

The main thing which I think could disrupt that prediction, is if countries make a serious effort at some point to reduce carbon emissions. In that case there could be "demand destruction" before we reach the peak of coal. Demand destruction may not seem likely right now, but people may become more sensitive to c02 emissions in the latter half of the 21st century when they really start seeing the damaging effects of climate change.

Personally I'm much more worried about the ice sheets on Greenland disintegrating, than about peak coal. With peak coal, we'll know decades in advance, and supplies of coal will decline gradually (as they have with oil), and we have many obvious alternatives, albeit more expensive. If Greenland starts disintegrating, on the other hand, then we have 20 years to evacuate all major coastal cities (which means most major cities worldwide).

Climate change will be a much more severe problem than peak coal, IMO. Peak coal might even benefit us.

"The planet can't handle perpetual economic growth and the economy can't work without it. It's a major conundrum, but one that must be resolved if we hope to sustain an ever-advancing civilization."

Tim Jackson, economics commissioner at the U.K.'s Sustainable Development Commission, has studied this problem in depth. He can't say a fully formed alternative [steady state] economic model is readily available,"

Research in 2009 by the University of Newcastle in Australia concluded that global coal production could peak sometime between 2010 and 2048. US Energy Information Administration projects world coal production to increase through 2030.Believing it is in 2025 is Energy Watch Group as well as the Institure for Energy. Your economic views are appalling as your obviously taking no research into any of your rants. taking a few minutes to simply type your post heading of peak coal showed far more information opposing your idea with some actual evidence and little assumption or point of view opinion as you place within your posts. Educate yourself or at least research something first.You look just as bad as the dumb "doomsayers" your all hot for.

When I type the post heading into google, I find a rash of experts who claim that peak coal is very distant. Extremely few of them claim that peak coal is imminent.

In fact there is only study claiming that peak coal is imminent, by Patzek and Croft. That study alone has caused this flurry about peak coal.

Even that study acknowledges that the conventional view among experts is that coal will last 200-400 years--something which it calls a "myth".

The study by Patzek and Croft is drastically mistaken, in my opinion. It contains serious errors (IMO) which invalidate its conclusions. Specifically, it performs a multi-Hubbert cycle approach. But a multi-hubbert cycle is drastically inappropriate because it will treat reductions in coal output imposed by demand or political considerations as a lack of coal in the ground. For example, if demand for coal falls in a certain region (for example, in the US, because we aren't building many new coal power plants) then the multi-Hubbert analysis would wrongly conclude that coal had peaked in the ground, when it is actually nowhere close to that. As a result, any kind of curve-fitting (including Hubbert analysis) is totally useless as a method of predicting peak coal, unless demand is increasing exponentially and there are no political barriers to its extraction. Since neither condition is satisfied for coal, Hubbert linearization and gaussian distributions of extraction are totally useless to predict the peak of coal, or its future extraction.

For example, coal in the western united states peaked in the early 20th century because of political considerations, then declined gradually thereafter, then shot upwards massively after the clean air act of 1970. Patzek and Croft's method would have wrongly assumed that coal had peaked because of limited availability in the ground. Their method of curve-fitting would have been off by a factor of 100x or more in this case. Any method which is off by that much in previously existing cases is not a reliable guide to future coal extraction.

You've not posted in for quite a few months now - is this because, contrary to what the 'debunking' blogsphere wants to believe, reality is pushing us forcibly down that rabbit hole and we're seeing our world for what it really is?